Sunday, May 13, 2012

Long Live 'Our' Gulf Bastards

Life is a golden gift from
Allah if you're a certified member of the Gulf
Counter-Revolution Club (GCC), also known as the
Gulf Cooperation Council; Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
can torture, kill, repress and demonize their own
subjects - in full confidence the "master" will
let you get away with it.

Just as the
Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty in power in Bahrain is
vowing, publicly, to keep arresting, tear-gassing,
raiding their homes, confiscating their jobs and
forcing pro-democracy protesters to live in
non-stop fear, Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin
Hamad al-Khalifa is being hosted in Washington by
the Barack Obama administration.

Prince
Salman - who Bahraini propaganda sells as a
"moderate" - showed up at the US State Department
side-by-side with Secretary of State
Hillary "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton. Those
who "die" are evil dictators of the Muammar
Gaddafi variety; "our" bastards get to party in DC
after being extended a red carpet welcome.

Is there any Arab Spring-related
repression and killing going in Bahrain? According
to Clinton, of course not; these are only
"internal issues" - in her own words.

What
this means in practice is that Clinton subscribes
to the official narrative that the
sectarianization of everything happening in
Bahrain is to be blamed on the protesters - and
not the al-Khalifas, who for a year now have been
destroying Shi'ite mosques and investing on
all-out demonization of all things Shi'ite (blame
it on "evil" Iran).

The al-Khalifas have
been way wilier than President Bashar al-Assad in
Syria; they have killed only an acceptable number
of people. But why is Bahrain substantially
"different" from Syria? Because "it hosts the US
Navy's 5th Fleet, helping the US military project
its might in the Gulf and contain Iran"; and
that's not a neo-conservative talking, but
Washington director of Human Rights Watch, Tom
Malinowski.

A bunch of cowards
Here is Libya conqueror Clinton:

Bahrain is a valued ally of the
United States. We partner on many important
issues of mutual concern to each of our nations
and to the regional and global concerns as well.
I'm looking forward to a chance to talk over
with His Royal Highness a number of the issues
both internally and externally that Bahrain is
dealing with and have some better understanding
of the ongoing efforts that the government of
Bahrain is undertaking. So again, His Royal
Highness, welcome to the United
States.

Here's a Bahraini government
spokesman telling it like it is to Reuters only
one day before the Clinton-Crown Prince schmooze:

We are looking into the perpetrators
and people who use print, broadcast and social
media to encourage illegal protest and violence
around the country. If applying the law means
tougher action, then so be
it.

Translation: we will keep going on
a rampage because the masters in Washington have
our backs covered.

Not a word from the
Obama administration on the arrest of top Bahraini
human-rights activist Nabeel Rajab, who Amnesty
International declared a "prisoner of conscience",
as well as calling for his immediate release.
Activist Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, for his part, has
been on a hunger strike for three months,
protesting his life imprisonment by the al-Khalifa
regime.

R2P, "responsibility to protect",
that oh so lovely doctrine espoused by the Three
Graces - Clinton, US ambassador to the United
Nations Susan Rice and Special Assistant to Obama
Samantha Power - does not apply to civilian
protesters, the majority of them Shi'ites, in
Bahrain. They have been yelling for their basic
human rights - of which they don't have much - to
be protected for over a year now.

Bahrain's Prime Minister Khalifa bin
Salman al Khalifa - whose Medieval methods would
lead Egyptian Omar "Sheikh al-Torture" Suleiman to
blush with envy, not to mention Prince Nayef from
the House of Saud - has been in power for 40
years.

And Bahrain's King Hamad has been
oh so generous; after all he commissioned a report
on the repression. Needless to say, the report,
even highly sanitized, hasn't been implemented.

What makes it even more tragic is that
these people are cowards. It would take just a
single word from Clinton or Obama for the
al-Khalifas to immediately stop their concerted
repression, using their hardcore Sunni police
force recruited from Pakistan, Syria and Yemen;
release the thousands of prisoners; and rehire the
thousands of workers who were laid off because
they are "subversive". Here's why.

There
has been a rumor in Britain that Nasser Bin Hamad,
the son of Bahrain's King, might be banned from
attending the London Summer Olympic Games this
summer. There are graphic reasons for it; he
personally threatened many athletes, on top of
being accused of torture. So what did he do? In
haste, he deleted all his threatening tweets.
Expect Nasser to be partying in Mayfair in July.

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